{"id":36874,"date":"2017-06-27T14:40:12","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T19:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=36874"},"modified":"2017-06-27T15:04:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T20:04:59","slug":"how-pro-trump-are-mormons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2017\/06\/how-pro-trump-are-mormons\/","title":{"rendered":"How Pro Trump are Mormons?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at BCC<\/a> there were a few people claiming in the comments how Mormons were for<\/em>\u00a0Donald Trump for President. Now I completely understand why people would say this, given that Trump won Utah in the election. However I think that at best one needs to seriously qualify this statement.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"
Trump Romney: Any Questions?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/a>First off if people recall during the primaries the media constantly talked about how anti-Trump Mormons were. Not only did Trump only get 14% of the primary vote<\/a>\u00a0but the New York Times reported that top Mormons were in an \u201call out revolt\u201d against Trump. A quick Google shows dozens upon dozens of stories about Mormon opposition to Trump. Slate\u2019s “Why Mormons Don\u2019t Like Trump<\/a>” is but one example. \u00a0To neglect these stories is at best to be doing significant historical revisionism.<\/p>\n

Of course people claiming Mormons support Trump would note that for all the opposition they still voted for Trump. While that\u2019s a fair point, again I think it has to be examined before going too far. To draw an analogy, suppose the neighborhood bully comes up to you and says, \u201cI\u2019m going to punch you in the face or kick you in the gut. You pick.\u201d You pick the kick. Now it\u2019d be ridiculous to say you were for<\/em>\u00a0getting kicked in the gut. To say you\u2019re for something entails some reasonable degree of approval. I\u2019m not sure Mormons gave that. There are several reasons for that.<\/p>\n

First, beyond just Trump\u2019s dismal showing in the primaries we have the huge ridiculous size of the swing in the GOP vote in Utah, a Mormon stronghold. The GOP vote share went from 72.6% in 2012 to 45.9% in 2016. That\u2019s nearly a 30 point swing which is almost unheard of in Presidential elections. Not only that but third party voting went from 2.7% in 2012 to 26.3% in 2016. That\u2019s not exactly a sign of widespread support for Trump. Trump couldn\u2019t even get a majority in Utah. Beyond those figures though, we actually know how many people voting for Trump were voting for<\/em>\u00a0him rather than against<\/em>\u00a0Clinton. Exit polls<\/a>\u00a0had 49% of Trump voters saying they were voting against the other candidates.<\/p>\n

Next, a recent Utah Policy poll of approval of Trump<\/a> has 52% of Utahns with an unfavorable view of Trump. Only 45% view him favorable.\u00a0Admittedly that’s higher than national figures but surprisingly low for an overwhelmingly Republican state.<\/p>\n

It is true that according to Pew\u2019s national exit polls<\/a> 61% of LDS voted for Trump. That\u2019s still a huge drop from Romney (78%) or Bush (80%). In Utah according to exit polls only 45% of Mormons voted for Trump – a minority and a little more than half of what Romney got. \u00a0Don Peay, the Trump campaign\u2019s Utah state director said, \u201cclearly the epicenter of the anti-Trump movement in the country was in Utah.”<\/p>\n

So were Mormons for <\/em>Trump? It\u2019s hard to really make the claim they were or are.\u00a0The numbers are very low especially considering how overwhelmingly conservative American Mormons tend to be. It seems the best explanation was that both parties nominated extremely unpopular figures – so disliked that it really lacks parallel in the post-war period. While it’s not fair to blame Democrats for Donald Trump, the reality appears to be that had they had a candidate more liked than Clinton, Trump would almost certainly have lost. That probably would have been true even in Utah even acknowledging that people often are voting less for the person than for a certain set of policy outcomes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at BCC there were a few people claiming in the comments how Mormons were for\u00a0Donald Trump for President. Now I completely understand why people would say this, given that Trump won Utah in the election. However I think that at best one needs to seriously qualify this statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":36875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/TrumpAnyQuestions.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36874"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36881,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36874\/revisions\/36881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}